Dear Colleagues,
This is a wonderful opportunity to get into the proverbial debate again. University VS Practice. Or, University and Practice? It depends how we look at the situation.
On the one side are professors who envisage the future, on the other side are the job captains who have to respond to the needs of contractors. Professors dwell in the world of generalized knowledge. Job captains need workers that know the minutiae of everyday operations and do not waste time in asking questions. Job captains wish that university does that job. Professors have to make hard choices about what to teach and what to leave out of the curriculum.
There are a number of problems here due to inability of society to reconceptualize the University in relation to its proverbial functions and the trend to maintain societal equilibrium by the mechanisms of supply and demand. With the commercialization of social life, previous views about University and its outputs are questioned and rejected.
Practitioner want to hire fresh graduates for minimal salary and the knowledge of a well-functioning professional. When they cannot find such labor force, they see a problem with University. Many of the practitioners have forgotten their own learning curve. Now they are employers who have to pay the bills and make some profit.
Professors believe in panta rhei. Everything changes constantly, industry processes, procedures, and standards. The only thing that persists is the professional's ability to conceptualize problems and search for solutions in novel situations. University graduates need to carry with them general knowledge about the system, ability to learn quickly situational knowledge, and ability to upgrade on the go.
A major reason for the societal attitudes against University is the misunderstanding about this institution. Employers see it as a source of labor. However, in reality university is also a knowledge production facility. Faculty have dual responsibilities. In the best case scenario faculty produce new knowledge and share it with their students.
What will happen if the research requirement is suspended? What will happen if the faculty are recruited among successful practitioners? How will society pay competitive salaries? How will society organize and fund research? How will the professions progress if educational programs focus on daily routines? How is it possible that the norm for medical education is 10+ years after high school and the norm for design education is 2+ years? Is design easier than medicine? Or it looks that way because there are no patients who die on the surgical table?
There is also one other aspect of the University-Practice interaction. In practice, it is not important how much you know. It is important how much you are connected. Power trumps expertise. This is particularly true for the professions that depend on or interpret human-made rules and require social power, like law and business. For a number of reasons, among them ethical reasons, University cannot teach the real techniques of social power generation. The paradox is that these skills are learned in extracurricular activities. Actually, in activities that have nothing to do with educational engagements.
However, academics need to concede that University is lacking flexibility in terms of selecting professionals for faculty positions. Educational establishments need to realize the differences among various kinds of courses and that contribute to the development of professionals. In rough terms, there are theory courses and hands-on courses. The recruitment criteria for different types of courses need to be different. It is not necessary to push hands-on instructors to make break-through innovations in the philosophy of the profession. The studio/practice instructors need to be good at doing things. However, they also need to engage in some kind of applied scholarship to develop better their reflexivity and explication skills, as well as abilities to acquire new knowledge and to teach others how to do that. The system of producing new faculty has to change. It should consider the need for practical experience. It should also provide mechanisms for developing academic skills. There are certain ways to do that. Unfortunately, most institutions disregard them.
This topic is infinite. I will stop here.
Best wishes,
Lubomir
Lubomir Popov, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Interior Design Program
American Culture Studies affiliated faculty
Bowling Green State University
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-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don Norman
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2011 10:18 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Think Design Ed has problems? Consider law
Design may be concerned about how it educates, deliberating between
the two poles of theory (aka research) and practice, but consider law.
Here is a wonderful article about the failures of modern law
education in the USA, where professors know lots of theory but nothing
of how law is actually practiced.
From the 20 Nov. 2011, Sunday New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/after-law-school-associates-learn-to-be-lawyers.html
I could write the same article about Business Schools. Actually, many
have complained that this situation applies to Engineering Schools as
well.
Design is still very practical. The challenge to those of us who want
more theory and breadth is to avoid falling into the legal trap that
is described in the article.
(That previous paragraph is especially important to people like me.Yes
we need to broaden design education for the 21st century, but the
primary goal is to produce practitioners. As universities more and
more require that design professors have PhDs and publish erudite
articles in refereed journals that are read only by other erudite
professors, we must not lose track of our craft. Yes, I am talking
about me, among others.)
Don Norman
Nielsen Norman Group
KAIST (Daejeon, S. Korea), IDEO Fellow
[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/
Latest book: "Living with Complexity"
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